by Audrey Grey
A stupid grin transforms my face. It’s like I am nine again. Looking at his picture. Imagining a happy, uncomplicated life. I want to go back there. I want to feel that way again.
But Caspian clears his throat, and my idiotic fantasy dies an awkward death. “Lady March,” he says, “I think once again you have misunderstood. I was suggesting you replace Delphine’s position in court. She offers the court brute strength and a sense of cruel leadership they understand. I need someone who can challenge her position, give my people something more, something better.”
“Oh,” is all I can think to say. Stupid, Stupid. “What about your wedding on Hyperion? I mean, if you feel that way about her—”
“How I feel, Lady March, has no bearing on my life or my obligations to the empire.” Frowning, he runs a finger over his chin. “We were friends, once, the Countess and I. I used to be able to calm her unpredictable nature, but it’s getting harder and harder to do.”
“I suppose in a few short days you’ll have a lifetime to try.” I say this without thinking, a habit I’m learning Lady March suffers from.
Caspian chuckles darkly, his head tilted to the side as he peers at me.
“What?”
“It’s just I can’t remember the last time I actually enjoyed a conversation this much.”
Funny, but I feel the same way. Talking to Caspian feels good, natural, like the easiest thing in the world.
Suddenly Caspian lifts his hands to the collar of my cloak, his knuckles warm against my throat as he pulls it tighter around me. His eyes hold mine. “Which is why, Lady Everly March, you have to survive the first trial. I need you”—he laughs softly—“I mean I need you as an ally . . . and I hope as a . . . a friend.”
“Do you think I can win?” I want him to say yes, even if it is a lie. I need him to.
But Caspian blinks and pulls away from me, as if the fact that in a few hours I will probably be dead has finally registered. “It’s late, Lady March. Best we use the remaining time to prepare you.”
In the end, there’s not much Caspian can tell me I don’t already know about my mother and the Shadow Trials, but I pretend to be the doe-eyed student for his benefit. After we’re done, Caspian holds out the blindfold.
I stretch my arms, talking through a yawn. “Is the . . . blindfold . . . necessary?”
Caspian’s lips lift at the corners as he twirls his pointer finger by my head. I obey, turning my back to him so he can slide my blindfold back on. “This place and its location has remained a secret since inception, Lady March. I plan to keep it that way.”
My mare is right outside the Sim door. Even blindfolded, I mount easily, gripping the saddle pommel, the pleasant smell of horse and leather intermingled with the dampness of the tunnel. I am just settling into the saddle when I feel a weight behind me. “Poseidon must have followed Merida’s mare.”
“Your horse?” I say, trying to find a comfortable way to sit without pressing into him.
Caspian casually pulls me against his chest so we fit on the saddle better. “Even on his good days,” Caspian says, moving my hair to the side, out of his face, so his breath warms my neck, “Poseidon is more devil than horse.”
I stiffen as his fingers graze my hip on the way to the reins.
“I can lead from the ground, if . . . uh, you prefer?” His voice makes me think he is smiling.
“No . . . This way will be faster.”
I let myself sink into his warm chest. This is what it would have been like. If my father hadn’t died. If I hadn’t been sent to the pit. If my life had followed the path my mother had carved for me and I had been matched with Caspian. I force down a shiver. My body hums with electricity, and I feel light and heavy at the same time.
The feelings I feel—or felt—for Riser were sharp. Uncomfortable. Splinters buried too deep to remove. But this is different. This is pleasant, safe. If I could choose, I would choose this.
Sunlight kisses my face. We are outside. As Caspian urges my mare up the stairs, gravity fitting my body to his like perfectly matched puzzle pieces, I shiver again and Caspian, thinking I’m cold, or perhaps scared, wraps his arms around me, sinking his chin into the curve of my neck.
“The answer is yes,” he breathes. “I think you can win, all of it.”
And I almost believe him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Although Caspian thinks I’m headed to the recreational complex to practice, I find my room instead and keel onto the bed. My brain keeps going over the first line from my father’s incomplete riddle. The only sphinx I’ve ever seen comes from the House Laevus Crest. But a three-headed sphinx? I rack my memories for stories from my book of gods and mythological creatures, but my eyes keep closing and the images blur . . .
Blackness. Mud. The smell of human excrement and decomposing flesh and fear. Howling sounds, like souls being ripped apart.
I am dying. Curled into myself.
Too exhausted to move after clawing over a hundred feet through the dirt and rocks and grime, I lie here thinking about Max and how I’m going to let him down. I tried, digging the tunnels so I could survive a little bit longer and somehow make it back to him, but there’s no food or water here, and I’m too weak to go find any.
I can hear feet scuffing the dirt as they come for me. I hope they’ll kill me first. I hope it is quick. But mostly I just hate the sense of gratitude I feel.
I wait, but nothing happens. Then I sense heat against my lips. Taste warm, salty richness. My body reacts, greedily sucking, making slurping-gasping-grunting-coughing noises.
As my lips feel the rim of the bowl and my tongue reaches out, my eyes flick open and I see Riser kneeling there. He smiles down at me with his one bruised eye and says, “Don’t you dare give up, Digger Girl. Fight. Fight until your last dying breath.”
I know as soon as my eyes flutter open it’s time. I know before I walk to the window and spy the apricot-sized pit mere feet from the sun. Before I see Flame’s intense, troubled look. Before I hear the knock on the door and the attendant summoning me.
Flame hands me a sporty onyx jumpsuit with Turkish legs and an open back and black patent leather boots—items once again delivered to our door by Merida. With all of the clothes she has loaned me, I am beginning to wonder just how well off they are.
Flame’s contribution is a foxtail aigrette long and sharp enough to hold my complex system of braids into place on my head and, if necessary, pierce flesh and bone. Although I am sure I will hate it, it somehow finishes my look.
The wardrobe doors are closed, hiding whatever Flame is working on, but I glance pointedly at it and raise the question with my eyes: Is it safe yet?
Flame shakes her head.
No outside help from Nicolai or Flame. I am on my own.
At the door, she stops me. “Which eye is dominant?”
“I don’t know. I guess my right—”
She pries my right eyelid open, her finger coming straight at my eyeball.
“There.” She waits, as if I should thank her or something.
“Did you just . . . poke my eyeball?”
Rolling her eyes, she traipses to the open window and slides the thick mahogany drapes across, shutting out the light.
As soon as I register the darkness, I feel a slight twitch in my eye and the room resolves from the shadows. I watch her carefully cross the floor toward me. Her hands are out to feel for objects in her way . . . because it’s dark, which means I shouldn’t be able to see her.
I hold out my hands in front of me. “Remarkable.”
With a swish of the drapes, my vision goes back to normal. “The night-vision lens I put in your eye can only be seen with a special light,” Flame says. “If you need to get rid of it fast, close your eye and press for fifteen seconds to make it dissolve.”
“Thanks, Fienian,” I say. “I guess you have your uses.”
She frowns. There’s rustling as she pins something—the phoenix brooch—to my chest. “W
ear this with honor.” Clasping her fingers over mine, she slides her tiny hands down to cusp each of my elbows and bows her head. “Blood for freedom.”
I bow my head. “Death for honor.”
It’s strange, speaking like a Fienian. But Flame is right; this is war, perhaps of a different kind, but war nonetheless.
And it’s time to go to battle.
The carriage waiting for us, a regal, shiny black monstrosity requiring four massive black horses, flies two pennants. The Royalist Phoenix and the House Laevus Sphinx, a lion with a woman’s head and large white wings against a black background. So this must be Caspian’s personal carriage. Two sphinxes are engraved into the pristine white velvet upholstery, and I’m reminded that I’m not any closer to solving my father’s riddle.
Merida and I sit quietly across from each other. Dressed in a baby-blue corselet satin jumper and white kimono-sleeved bodice, she almost looks angelic. Especially with her boots kicked off and her bare feet tucked beneath her like a child.
We spend the first few minutes gazing out the windows at the other carriages, trying to glimpse the other finalist pairings. Teagan enters a carriage with a thin boy I recognize from the Culling. Just before a wall of climbing roses blocks our view, Rhydian rounds a carriage, walking stiffly beside a girl I don’t know in a bright-lavender riding frock.
I’m also searching for anything that might relate to the riddle. Now that I’m looking, though, sphinxes seem to be everywhere. On the carriage. In the gardens. Engraved in the stone archways and bridges. But none have three heads.
Merida breaks the silence. “That outfit looks as if I made it for you.”
I pinch a square of silky fabric from my trousers. “You made this?”
“Of course. What else could I do surrounded by four sisters? I had to escape somehow!” She admires her own outfit. “They hated country life, so I started patching together gowns from the fabric leftover from my job. We would turn the living room into a ballroom and pretend we were still on the Island.”
“You were Golds?”
“From the famous house Pope. But after our fall from court, we sold most of our High Colored gowns to pay our tithes and I became a seamstress.” She laughs suddenly. “Maybe the first trial will involve sewing.”
I feel myself smiling. “If that’s the case, I’m done for.”
“So, what skills do you possess, Lady March?”
Telling lies, I think bitterly. Detecting weakness in others. Knowing where to slash the neck so the body will exsanguinate before the person can scream.
Snuffing people. That’s what I am good at.
“Stories,” I say, remembering how I liked to entertain Max with the stories about gods and titans from my illicit book. “I used to be good at telling stories, I think.”
“Perhaps you can regale me someday.” Merida glances out the window. We are passing through the apple orchards, and the carriage bumps every so often as the wheels run over the rotten apples strewn on the dirt road. A thick cloying smell haunts the air.
I pause, knotting my fingers together. “Um . . . Thank you for, you know, staying with me in the Sim after I passed out. Most people would have left me.”
Merida shakes her head, patches of sunlight dancing in her pale tresses. “I don’t believe that, Everly. I think, given a chance, most people will surprise you.”
Her naivety forms a cold pit in my stomach. Merida is not going to survive the first trial. I know this just like I know I can’t do anything about it. Not if I want to come out alive. I clear my throat. “Well, thank you, anyway.”
“I do wish you could have seen the Prince’s face when he saw you lying there. Like he’d swallowed poison. He fell to his knees, shaking you and ordering you to wake up”—her voice goes masculine—“Open your eyes, Lady March, I command thee!”
Despite our nerves, we both burst into childlike giggles.
“And what about that goodbye with Lord Thornbrook?”
I shrug, wanting to slap my hands over my ears at the mention of Riser.
“You’re lucky, even if they did send him away,” she continues in a wistful voice. “I’ve never even been kissed.”
“Well, there’s always time for—” Realizing my mistake I shut up, but it’s too late. Cold silence overtakes us.
“I know I’m going to die, Everly. Either I’ll perish in the trials or I’ll lose and die on the other side of the fence. I’m not as strong or brave as the others.”
Even though Merida’s quiet voice fades into the muffled sounds of the carriage, her words hang thick and heavy in the air. Her eyes glimmer as her gaze traces the sloping hills outside. In the painful silence, I almost tell her she’s wrong a hundred times. But I don’t want to lie to her. Somehow, that’s important. After a while, she drags a hand over her cheek and fishes inside her pocket. The silver pillbox gleams as she opens it.
I know what the little round metallic pill is. Like most Centurions, my bodyguard, Gabriel, carried a similar pill in a secret compartment inside his pocket watch. It was an “in- case” pill. In case he was captured by Fienians and tortured. In case he failed to protect us. In case the world ended. In case death was the preferable option.
“In case I lose and am thrown back over the wall like Lord Thornbrook.” She says this like she’s telling me what she’ll have for supper. “They say it’s like going to sleep.”
My eyes can’t seem to leave the shiny pill. Except you don’t wake up, Merida. But I don’t say that either, because sometimes the truth is best left unspoken.
There’s a sharp bump and she pockets the pill. Outside the window, I see we are crossing a stone bridge. On the other side, seeped in yellow sunlight and a dazzling array of wildflowers, a huge valley carves a swathe through the snow-capped mountains in the distance.
A single, stately Gold carriage waits in the center of the valley, its window dark, flanked by four Centurions. A little ways away stands a large pavilion, its crimson drapes flapping softly. It shades a long table of what looks to be food, and in the center, shimmering like a mirage, sits the hologram Emperor on his hologram throne. Beside him, Delphine’s father, General Cornelius Bloodwood, rests on a real wooden throne almost as big as the Emperor’s. Flags are positioned every sixty feet or so around it to create a huge circle.
Caspian and the other mentors wait for us on horses. Their House Sigils flash from their ceremonial robes, their hats and fascinators matching the colors of their House. Our carriage stops and is soon joined by the others.
We all pile out. No one speaks as the mentors, on horseback, lead us toward the pavilion and position us in front of each Chosen’s House flag.
Caspian growls insults as he dismounts, Poseidon once again misbehaving, kicking and hopping in angry circles. It takes Caspian a minute to quiet him. Finally, he turns to face us. “Lady Pope, Lady March.”
His eyes linger on mine, long enough for my breath to catch inside my chest. We both lower our heads and perform a quick bow.
Caspian circles around us, slow, methodical, as if he’s sizing us up. “Finalists, your breathing tells me you are both scared. That’s good. Fear helps you survive. Lose that and death is not far away.” His voice is strong, commanding, and detached. In case we don’t make it. “But I didn’t choose you for your fear; I chose you because you have proven to be strong. Resourceful. Brave. You have proven yourselves under pressure.” He pauses for a moment. “Today, you need to prove yourselves beyond that. You need to be warriors. Finalists, are you ready to do that?”
Merida slips her hand over mine. “Ready.”
Caspian looks to me. “Lady March?”
I squeeze Merida’s hand. “Ready.”
“Good. I’ll be waiting for you at the end.”
From across the field, I hear the doors to the carriage open. My mother stands erect, taller than I remember, most of her silver wig covered by an elaborate royal blue fascinator and matching cape. As she slings one lithe leg over a steel-gray ho
rse, sunlight plays off the two white doves on her cape. Four Centurions follow suit, their horses shadowing hers. She rides slowly, purposefully toward the first two finalists. A short conversation and she’s on to the next.
The sun is hot on our faces as we wait our turn. Caspian’s dark flag flails in the wind like an animal trying to escape a steel trap. There’s the sound of my mother’s horse galloping toward us. I blink and she is here, blocking the sun, her shadow cool on my cheeks. “Emperor’s blessings, finalist,” my mother says to Merida. “May your wits and courage see you to the other side.”
It’s weird. I didn’t feel anything when I saw her exit the carriage. Nor when she was making her rounds. But now, as soon as I see her hazel eyes, the familiar crinkles around her thin lips and errant freckles over her neck and face, something primal inside me crumples. I am little again. Powerless to do anything but love her. I want her to fold me in her arms, press my cheek against hers. To whisper everything will be okay.
To love me.
With everything I possess, I want her to love me the way no one else ever will.
How could you, Mother?
Her eyes sweep over mine in a careless, Gold-you-are-nothing sort of way. I grind my teeth until my jaw muscles twitch, swallowing the tears burning the back of my throat.
“Emperor’s blessings, finalist,” my mother says, the way one talks to a stranger who doesn’t have long to live.
How could you?
Something stirs inside her detached eyes—a sliver of emotion? The Centurions twitch on their horses as she suddenly dismounts in her quick, efficient way. She is breaking script.
And that never, ever happens.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“You are Lady Everly March?” she asks.
I nod. Her voice sounds as if it’s coming from a far-away tunnel.